Human Services unifies satisfaction surveys

Having pitched Medicare, Centrelink and the Child Support Program into one integrated entity under the banner of the Department of Human Services, as of July 1 last year, the federal government is now out to harmonise the disparate medley of customer satisfaction surveys inherited by the new grouping.

Existing arrangements run through to the middle of this year. After that, Human Services wants a specialist survey group to organise a more integrated structure and methodology, keeping costs within reasonable limits while still catering for people with disabilities, migrants and refugees with language difficulties and indigenous people.

The initial contract is for three years, with options for two one-year extensions. Melbourne-based tenders specialist TenderSearch gives a closing date for responses of April 4. A reassuring addendum in the tender documents confirms the price range for the contract is $4.5 million to $5.5 million, “not $41,000 as originally specified in AusTender".

Previously, the specific agencies operated fairly independently, with an abbreviated Department of Human Services (DHS) functioning as a kind of joint policy secretariat for advising the government about specific issues facing the agencies.

Some idea of the mishmash facing the successful tenderer is set out in a background section of the request for tender document. Surveys for Centrelink and the pre-integration Human Services overlay administration were handled with computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI).

Medicare Australia blends CATI with paper questionnaires. Child Support surveys are carried out with automated IVR (interactive voice response), with about 50 per cent of phone customers asked if they want to participate in a survey.

Frequency varies from weekly for Centrelink, contacting clients who have had recent phone or face-to-face contact to once a year for Medicare, and once a year for the pre-merger Human Services.

Surveys aren’t an optional service for DHS. It is required to determine overall satisfaction with the quality of its people, services and products. This covers access and equity in service delivery, and responses of businesses it deals with.

Related Quotes

Company Profile

The coverage must specifically include customers who have made a complaint, those from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, indigenous clients, international customers, Medicare providers such as prescribers, practitioners, practice managers, ancillary health care providers and approved suppliers (pharmacists, dispensing doctors and hospital authorities) and aged care providers.

The tender documents list some barriers to coverage. It is a requirement to include customers from a diverse cultural and linguistic background (DCALB), with options to provide other languages if English isn’t suitable.

“The successful tenderer will provide options and costings for ensuring a diverse range of multicultural customers are surveyed and new and emerging languages are captured in large enough numbers to be statistically valid," the tender specifies.

“Interviews should also be conducted with hearing-impaired respondents using teletypewriter [TTY] equipment as required."

For remote communities including indigenous customers, options may include innovations in technology.

In another tender, closing on April 2, the Melbourne-headquartered Institute of Family Studies needs data collection services for a national Survey of Recently Separated Parents (SRSP).

This is for the Australian government’s Attorney-General’s Department, which wants to gain insight into the experiences of a cohort of recently separated parents before the Family Law Amendment Act 2011 cutting in on June 8.

There could be additional waves later on, to provide a longitudinal study over time, and an additional cohort study.